Women lead the way in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander corporations

The Registrar of Indigenous Corporations, Anthony Beven, has today released his fifth report on the top 500 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander corporations.

The report covers the 2011–12 financial year and looks at the overall income, geographic distribution and sectoral information of the 500 highest earning corporations registered under the Corporations (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander) Act 2006 (CATSI Act).

The report is based on data supplied to the Registrar by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander corporations in their audited financial statements and general reports.

Some of the key findings of this year’s report include:

Women continue to play a dominant role in the governance of corporations. The representation of women on the board of directors stood at 54.9 per cent, an increase of 2.1 per cent since 2007–08.

The gender composition on boards varies depending on a corporation’s income, geographic location and sector in which the corporation operates.

The combined income of the top 500 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander corporations for 2011–12 was almost $1.61 billion (compared to $1.43 billion in 2010–11), an increase of 12.6 per cent—exceeding nominal GDP growth of only 4.9 per cent in 2011–12.

The combined value of assets held by the top 500 corporations was $1.84 billion.

In comparison to 2010–11 the average income of the top 500 corporations in 2011–12 increased from almost $2.86 million to $3.22 million.

The combined income of corporations located in the Northern Territory and Western Australia generated 72.4 per cent of the overall national income for 2011–12.

As in 2010–11, the health and community services sector was the largest with 40 per cent of the top 500 corporations operating in this sector. However, the sector contracted by 5.7 per cent.

The top 20 corporations received approximately the same amount of revenue from self-generated income as from government grants. However, the top five corporations had 83.1 per cent of their income from self-generated sources.

No charitable donations were reported by the top 20 corporations.

‘The report clearly shows that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander corporations are leading the way in terms of gender equality. Also the emerging picture in terms of growth in income and employment is very encouraging with both exceeding 10 per cent in 2011–12,’ Mr Beven said.